Growing shoes and furniture: A design-led biomaterial revolution

Plants are magnetic, a vase built by 60,000 bees, and shoes made from cellulose.

The natural world has, over millions of years, evolved countless ways to ensure its survival. The industrial revolution, in contrast, has given us just a couple hundred years to play catch-up using technology. And while we've been busily degrading the Earth since that revolution, nature continues to outdo us in the engineering of materials that are stronger, tougher, and multipurpose.

Take steel for example. According to the World Steel Association, for every ton produced, 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere. In total in 2010, the iron and steel industries, combined, were responsible for 6.7 percent of total global CO2 emissions. Then there's the humble spider, which produces silk that is—weight for weight—stronger than steel. Webs spun by Darwin's bark spider in Madagascar, meanwhile, are 10 times tougher than steel and more durable than Kevlar, the synthetic fiber used in bulletproof vests. Material scientists savvy to this have ensured biomimicry is now high on the agenda at research institutions, and an exhibit currently on at the Space Foundation EDF in Paris is doing its best to popularize the notion that we should not just be salvaging the natural world but also learning from it.

En Vie (Alive), curated by Reader and Deputy Director of the Textile Futures Research Center at Central Saint Martins College Carole Collet, is an exposition for what happens when material scientists, architects, biologists, and engineers come together with designers to ask what the future will look like. According to them, it will be a world where plants grow our products, biological fabrication replaces traditional manufacturing, and genetically reprogrammed bacteria build new materials, energy, or even medicine.

It's a fantastical place where plants are magnetic, a vase is built by 60,000 bees, furniture is made from funghi, and shoes from cellulose. You can print algae onto rice paper, then eat it or encourage gourds to grow in the shape of plastic components found in things like torches or radios (you'll have to wait a few months for the finished product, though). These are not fanciful designs but real products, grown or fashioned with nature's direct help.

In other parts of the exhibit, biology is the inspiration and shows what might be. Eskin, for instance, provides visitors with a simulation of how a building's exterior could mimic and learn from the human body in keeping it warm and cool.

Alive shows that, speculative or otherwise, design has a real role to play in bringing different research fields together, which will be essential if there's any hope of propelling the field into mass commercialization.

"More than any other point in history, advances in science and engineering are making it feasible to mimic natural processes in the laboratory, which makes it a very exciting time," Craig Vierra, Professor and Assistant Chair, Biological Sciences at University of the Pacific, tells Wired.co.uk. In his California lab, Vierra has for the past few years been growing spider silk proteins from bacteria in order to engineer fibers that are close, if not quite ready, to give steel a run for its money. The technique involves purifying the spider silk proteins away from the bacteria proteins before concentrating these using a freeze-dryer in order to render them into powder form. A solvent is then added, and the material is spun into fiber using wet spinning techniques and stretched to three times its original length.

"Although the mechanical properties of the synthetic spider fibers haven't quite reached those of natural fibers, research scientists are rapidly approaching this level of performance. Our laboratory has been working on improving the composition of the spinning dope and spinning parameters of the fibers to enhance their performance."

Vierra is a firm believer that nature will save us.

"Mother Nature has provided us with some of the most outstanding biomaterials that can be used for a plethora of applications in the textile industry. In addition to these, modern technological advances will also allow us to create new biocomposite materials that rely on the fundamentals of natural processes, elevating the numbers and types of materials that are available. But, more importantly, we can generate eco-friendly materials.

"As the population size increases, the availability of natural resources will become more scarce and limiting for humans. It will force society to develop new methods and strategies to produce larger quantities of materials at a faster pace to meet the demands of the world. We simply must find more cost-efficient methods to manufacture materials that are non-toxic for the environment. Many of the materials being synthesized today are very dangerous after they degrade and enter the environment, which is severely impacting the wildlife and disrupting the ecology of the animals on the planet."

According to Vierra, the fact that funding in the field has become extremely competitive over the past ten years is proof of the quality of research today. "The majority of scientists are expected to justify how their research has a direct, immediate tie to applications in society in order to receive funding."

We really have no alternative but to continue down this route, he argues. Without advances in material science, we will continue to produce "inferior materials" and damage the environment. "Ultimately, this will affect the way humans live and operate in society."

We're agreed that the field is a vital and rapidly growing one. But what value, if any, can a design-led project bring to the table, aside from highlighting the related issues. Vierra has assessed a handful of the incredible designs on display at Alive for us to see which he thinks could become a future biomanufacturing reality.

BioCouture

Suzanne Lee founded BioCouture in 2003 with the sole purpose of pushing forward the future of manufacturing fashion through biodesign. BioCouture works to link up "biomaterial innovators" and manufacturers to see if designs that are superior to our current offerings can truly be brought to market. Along the way, she has designed and engineered prototypes to prove the point, including the crab helmet, a helmet inspired by a crab's exoskeleton and built from cellulose and keratin, similar to the material chitin (of which the real thing is largely composed). From her South London workshop, Lee has also brought us "vegetable leather," grown from green tea, sugar, bacteria, and yeast.

For Alive she is exhibiting the first shoe that was grown rather than made, in collaboration with shoe designer Liz Ciokajlo-Squire. The cellulose shoe, aside from being rather attractive, can be molded to fit any foot perfectly.

Vierra's take: This is similar to our approach and the use of spider silk proteins that are manufactured from yeast and bacteria. In this particular case, these organisms are being used to produce a structural component that is found in plant cell walls that can be used to make footwear. It is considered a biodegradable, sustainable material that is eco-friendly. It has good tensile strength (not as high as spider silk) and can be molded. This seems like a reasonable idea.

Vessel #1

To convince bees to make you a vase, first you have to make your faux-hive/shell bee friendly. And that's exactly what product designer Tomás Libertiny did, using computer-aided design. "The design always lies in a combination of convex and concave curves," he tells Wired.co.uk. "If the design doesn't comply with these rules, the honeybees won't accept it or will not build according to the design."

TÃ³mas Libertiny

Working with a beekeeper in Holland, Libertiny used a combination of an original hive and a skeleton mold in which the bees could produce wax that would eventually form the vase. The result, he says, is a vase that can contain 1,000 percent of its own weight and be molded according to any new design with the employment of a few thousand more bees–like a bonsai tree, he says, it must be encouraged to grow and thought of as a permanent work in progress. "It would interesting to find a comparison of an industrial, manmade material that allows such radical reuse and reshaping."

It took 60,000 bees two months to make the vase for Libertiny, "an artistic exploration of the potential of natural process that we could tap on and use to our advantage."

"I think there lies a huge potential for generations to come to harness whatever is out there in order to live sustainably. I must stress that sustainability is not what the general media talks about. Sustainability is not what is made out of wood; sustainability is not herbs and living in the tree houses... sustainability is awareness."

Of the designer's role in pushing forward thinking its field in biology, Libertiny says: "I think one day designers should be elected as politicians on some levels. It is precisely this type of pragmatic thinking that people need. If there is no understanding of design as a way of thinking then the designer's role is irrelevant and is reduced only to the level of pretty things that we buy."

Vierra's view: The use of bees to create vessels whose design is controlled by man is creative; however, two months to create one vessel may not be a practical timeline for materials development. The "slow prototyping" may be too "snail-like" for the value of the final product and demand for the vessels. Also, it would seem like the costs could be high.

Algaerium Bioprinter

Japanese designer Marin Sawa wants us to stay healthy by printing and eating our own algae everyday. And she's already built the printer to do it. Sawa has been working with researchers from Imperial College London to create an inkjet printing technology that could print algae onto rice paper. "My project aims at adapting this industrial-scale production to a domestic technology," she explains in a statement. "By introducing living microalgae to food printing, we have invented a new way of consuming health food supplements. At microscale, the Bioprinter technology provides a process in which cells can be ruptured and their nutrients can be readily absorbed. At macroscale, the Bioprinter envisions an immediate future in which algae 'farming' forms a new part of urban agriculture to reinforce food safety in our cities."

Vierra's view: Printing specific microalgae that are domestically grown to use as a food source is an interesting proposition. There likely is a niche for this application in some parts of the world. On a global scale, however, there are likely to be challenges. For example, let's hypothetically imagine that these organisms can be grown at home (different species that have different colors etc.), printed into different designs, and provide substances that are nutrient rich. Will people want to print their food and move away from traditional food sources, especially when traditional food sources and meals have become such a large part of many cultures and their social interactions? Personally, I could envision this dominating on a global level if traditional methods of obtaining resources were depleted or eliminated, but this is not likely to suit the masses unless given no other alternative. How will potential contamination be controlled or monitored for the average layperson at home with little or no scientific experience or knowledge of algae?

Packaging that creates its contents

IDEO Designers Will Carey and Adam Reineck have joined with Wendell Lim and Reid Williams of the University of California to design a probiotic drink that uses light-responsive bacteria to form a cup.

"During shipping and storage, these light-molded cups are 'alive' but remain dormant until water is poured inside, creating an effervescent, healthy drink," writes the team. "After several uses, the cup's walls begin to degrade and it can be composted." It's a utopian view of a life of consumption with no waste. But the concept is just that right now, a conceptual view of what could be.

Vierra's view: I'm more than a little nervous about how the cup will be sterilized between uses. It can't really get wet or it will begin decomposition prematurely. How will humidity and rain be handled? Other microbes are sure to take refuge in the cup and grow too.

Yamanaka Furniture

Furniture designer Philip Ross decided to grow a fungi chair off the back of a fascination with biochemistry during his years working as a chef and a wild mushroom-hunting hobby through which he learned about taxonomies, forest ecology, and husbandry. He began by combining live cells with sawdust to create sculptural objects, but on realizing how lightweight and strong the material turned out to be once dried out, moved on to product design.

"The cellulose serves as both food and framework for the organism to grow on, and within a week this aggregate solidifies as a result of the fungi's natural tendency to join together smaller pieces of its tissue into a larger constituent whole," he explains in a statement.

Vierra's view: This is also an interesting concept. One of my immediate questions revolves around what type of processing must be done to the final product(s) in order to render them inert? Which fungi will be used for the development of these structures, and, when dried, will it pose any health risks (e.g. allergic responses or dangerous materials that could be inhaled) to their users? When typical polymers are used to make objects, this is typically not an issue with humans as these compounds don't readily elicit strong immune responses; however, these are entire living fungi that are loaded with different molecules that will become dried and potentially airborne. If resins are needed to seal their products, these resins might be toxic for the environment, limiting the value of the final product.

En Vie / Alive will exhibit at the Space Foundation EDF in Paris until September 1.